Txt ur <3 out

Published: 04/30/2008

By Donna Harris
Cherokee Tribune Staff Writer

Etowah High School had a little help from its friends.

The Towne Lake school found out Monday morning that it had won the Kellie Pickler High School Hookup contest sponsored by Kicks 101.5 after sending in more than 500,000 text messages to the radio station during a 10-day period.

High school students in the Kicks listening area were asked to text the word "Pickler" and the name of their high school to the station between April 14 and 23, and the school with the most texts by 10 p.m. last Wednesday would win a free concert by Miss Pickler next Monday afternoon.

The winner was announced just after 7 a.m. by morning show deejays Cadillac Jack and Dallas McCade, with Principal Ron Dunnavant and Etowah cheerleaders and band members in the studio.

"Everybody is excited about the contest and getting Miss Pickler here," Dunnavant said Monday afternoon. "We're just excited about what's coming up and excited about enjoying the concert. It'll be a real nice treat."

The station received more than two million texts, and 25 percent of those were for Etowah, which had help from the community, its feeder middle schools and rivals of other schools in the top 10.

A parent of a student at Alexander High School in Douglasville called the station last week and said Alexander students were texting on behalf of Etowah to keep their rival, Chapel Hill High, from winning. The strategy worked, as Chapel Hill came in second place.

Mark Richards, program director and operations manager for Kicks, said the station got the idea for the contest from a Philadelphia radio station that did the same thing.

"We wanted to replicate that here in Atlanta," he said, noting Kicks now is able to interact with listeners through texting and wanted to use that technology.

Richards said the response to the contest was "remarkable."

"They received just over one million votes in Philadelphia, and we had two million," he said. "We're very excited to see high school students so excited about this. We're very excited about being out there, and we're appreciative of the great support from the community."

Richards added Miss Pickler, a Season 5 finalist on "American Idol," is the perfect performer for reaching the station's younger listeners because of her youth and her "terrific" personality.

Dunnavant, who was notified Thursday that his school had won, said he learned about the contest when his brother called him at a school tennis match on April 16 and told him "Etowah was No. 3."

After students at the match confirmed the school's participation, he got on the intercom the next morning to encourage the students to send in their texts - outside of school, of course.

"It's like everything else we do," he said. "If we're going to do it, let's be No. 1. The next day, we went to No. 1. The kids just took off with it, and the community got really behind us."

Another motivator was the fact that both Woodstock and Sequoyah high schools were "pretty high up there," said Dunnavant, who encouraged his students to listen to the 5:30 p.m. updates on Kicks every day to monitor their progress.

"Our kids are very competitive," he said, noting "text Pickler at Etowah" became sort of a battle cry for the students. "They thought if only one high school was going to win, it ought to be us."

Friday morning, Dunnavant played over the intercom a CD the Kicks deejays had made to announce to Etowah students that they had won the contest.

"In my office where I make the announcements, I'm kind of restricted and can't hear them too well, but I was told they were pretty excited, clapping and that kind of thing," he said.

And when he, the cheerleaders and the band members were in the Kicks studio Monday morning, the show was broadcast over the intercom since most students were arriving for the school's 7:30 a.m. start during that time.

The principal said he thinks it's "awesome the way the students and community really pulled together in our goal to do this."

"It's a fun item," he said. "While we're serious about our academic performance, it's nice to be able to have some fun with it."

The 2,300-student school already is preparing for the concert, which is a school activity and won't be open to the public, and is planning "a few welcome things for Kellie" that will involve some students, Dunnavant said.

"We'll have a few presentations for her," he said. "She was a former cheerleader in high school so we'll probably do a little cheerleading thing. We want to make sure she's properly welcomed."

dharris@cherokeetribune.com

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